The Gold of Naples

From the half-moon of its island-dotted bay, the city of Naples climbs up to the hills where the rich nestle in their gardened villas. Lining the stepped streets below, gurgling with underground drains, are the crowded tenements where live a million Neapolitan poor. It is a city that delights the eye as often as it offends the nose. "You may say, narrate, paint what you will, here is more than all of it put together," wrote Goethe. "I pardon all those who have lost their minds in Naples."

Regrettably, visitors often lose more than their minds. A charming but light-fingered people, Neapolitans relieve their guests of everything from cars and clothes to wallets and women. The police labor mightily but in vain. Last week 110 men accused of stealing hundreds of cars languished in jail as they awaited trial. Even in their absence, the theft of cars continues at a brisk thousand a month. One two-car Neapolitan family had its Fiat stolen in the morning, its brand-new Alfa Romeo in the afternoon. A Roman visitor found his car where he had parked it the night before--only the motor was gone.

The Big PX. Much of the redistributed wealth turns up for sale in the Forcella district, a teeming complex of narrow streets known locally as "the Big PX." In Forcella, portable radios sell at half the normal price, and bargain hunters can pick up new and still-crated U.S. washing machines, refrigerators, stoves, dryers, electric razors, and about any brand of cigarettes known to man. Where does it all come from? A shopkeeper explains: "That's why it's so cheap. One shouldn't ask."

Beneath Naples lies a labyrinth of tunnels that mostly end in the port area. They were built centuries ago by nobles and monks who wanted a safe and secret exit in dangerous times. Some 1,000 "tunnel guides" today make their living leading thieves to the right spot at the right time. In 1962, a British freighter en route from Leghorn to West Africa with a cargo of textiles, rugs and Olivetti typewriters sank in a storm off Naples. Insurance company divers said the water was too deep for salvage. The company ordered new divers from West Germany and, meanwhile, threw a police-boat cordon around the sunken ship. When the Germans arrived, they found the freighter stripped clean, presumably by human chains of skindivers working at night. At the same time, the vicoli (back alleys) of Naples were ablaze with Oriental rugs hung out to dry and the narrow streets shaded by bolts of damp cloth stretched from window to win dow. The stalls of Forcella were glutted with wet Olivetti typewriters selling for as little as $12.

Sold Soldier. Neapolitan eyes glisten whenever the citizens recall the happy, happy days of the mid-1940s. An estimated one-third of the millions of tons of U.S. supplies landed at war's end in

Naples vanished into thin air. It was then that the street-wise Neapolitan children called scugnizzi (spinning tops) began their practice of buying and selling American G.I.s. One would pick up a soldier, promise him everything, and lead him into back streets. Another kid might buy the prospect for 300 lire, and he was thus passed from hand to hand until an older scugnizzo decided it was time to act. The G.I. was first made muscio (dead drunk), and once he had passed out, his clothes were literally sold off his back, beginning with shoes and ending with underwear. That normally covered the cost of purchase, and the contents of the wallet were pure profit. "Those were the days," sighed an old man. "It was one big carnival. Nobody starved in Naples."

Rooted in Neapolitan lore is the tale of the greatest coup of all, said to have taken place in 1944. As the story goes, ten U.S. Liberty ships arrived in the harbor on a Monday, and by Friday there were only nine. Neapolitans say the missing ship was stealthily sailed out of the port and run aground on the coast ten miles to the south. The cargo was removed and the ship dismantled, piece by piece. American naval officers shrug off the story as apocryphal, but, say Neapolitans, how could any government admit it? "When that news swept the city," wrote the late author Curzio Malaparte, "the laughter seemed like an earthquake."

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